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Wynne shares concerns about medical marijuana vaping rules

Previously, only medical groups had been consulted, not the restaurant and entertainment industries and other stakeholders.

Kathleen Wynne was asked what she would do if someone used an e-cigarette to smoke medical marijuana next to her in a movie theatre. “I think I would have a problem with it, so I think we need to think this through,” she said.
(Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Premier Kathleen Wynne says she wants to sit in the no toking section at the movies.

Two days after her government pulled back a controversial plan to allow medical marijuana to be vaped or smoked in public places where tobacco smoking is banned, Wynne told reporters she understands the public backlash.

“I have a lot of sympathy for the concerns that were raised” about second-hand smoke, the premier told reporters Saturday at a Liberal convention where party activists lined up to have her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty, autograph his new memoir.

“I would have a problem with it,” Wynne replied when asked if she’d like to be watching a movie and have a patron sitting beside her vaping medicinal marijuana.

Previously, only medical groups had been consulted, not the restaurant and entertainment industries and other stakeholders.

Medical marijuana users, which include cancer patients dealing with severe pain and people with epilepsy who need the drug to control seizures, have pressed for the right to take their medication anywhere.

The Liberal convention, bringing party officials from around the province for a weekend of strategy sessions, included a moderated question-and-answer period with McGuinty, who resigned three years ago at the height of a political crisis‎ over cancelled gas-fired power plants in Oakville and Mississauga.

Deleted documents pertaining to the plant cancellations are now the subject of an OPP investigation, although McGuinty is not a subject of that probe or another into questionable business practices at ORNGE, the provincial air ambulance service, during his era.

Despite the cloud of those investigations hanging over the government, McGuinty appeared firmly back in the fold.

“The reality of a political career and of a leader is that there are challenging issues, there are mistakes, there are missteps that are made but that’s not the sole focus of a reflection on a career,” said Wynne, who has previously distanced herself from McGuinty amid fallout from the controversial gas plants scandal.

“The accomplishments have to be part of that,” she added, noting McGuinty, now a businessman, implemented full-day kindergarten, protected greenbelt lands from development and closed coal-fired ‎power plants that were contributing to global warming—something Wynne will tout at the global climate change summit in Paris when she arrives Sunday.

She credited McGuinty, who brought dozens of copies of his book “Making a Difference,” to hand out free of charge, for paving a path in her rise to premier.

“There’s no way I would be in this role if it weren’t for him. And I’ll tell you, when he shuffled me out of education, I wept,” Wynne recalled of leaving that ministry for other cabinet posts to round out her experience.

“It was a hard day, and all the media were saying ‘You’ve been demoted and what’s the problem,” she added.

“It was the single most important thing he could have done for me to get me ready for this job.”

Wynne called the climate change conference “humanity’s last real chance” to achieve a coordinated worldwide effort to keep the global rise in temperatures below two degrees Celsius.

“We have to get it right ... there’s no Planet B.”

Wynne will return from Paris after two days and head back across the Atlantic next weekend to spend more time at the conference.

“We can go to Paris with a strong voice,” she said of the Canadian contingent. “This is going to be a hard-fought agreement.”

The government will buy carbon offsets to account for the jet travel of the Ontario delegation.

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